1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to microscope technology for observing a specimen placed on a stage, and particularly to a microscope suitable for micro insemination.
2. Related Art
In recent years, micro insemination in the field of advanced reproductive medicine has been known as one use of microscopes. Micro insemination is a method of fertilizing an egg with a sperm under a microscope and is generally performed by an intracytoplasmic sperm injection (hereinafter, referred to as “ICSI”) method of piercing the egg fixed by a holding pipette with a sperm-containing micropipette to inject the sperm into the egg. In this ICSI, since a specimen is manipulated on a stage, an inverted microscope having a large working space above the stage is generally used.
Further, in the field of micro insemination, in order to improve egg fertilization rates, relief contrast microscopy (hereinafter, referred to as “RC microscopy”) that allows stereoscopic observation of egg, differential interference contrast microscopy (hereinafter, referred to as “DIC microscopy”) that is suitable for observation of sperms, and polarized light microscopy (hereafter, referred to as “PO microscopy”) that allows observation of spindles of egg are known (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 51-29149).
Further, recently, a microscope, which is configured of a plurality of electrically driven units including an electrically driven focusing unit, an electrically driven optical element changeover unit, and the like, is known as such a microscope (see, for example, International Patent Publication No. WO 1996/18924). In this technique, functions of receiving inputs of instruction signals for driving the electrically driven units are respectively allocated to a plurality of buttons provided in an operating unit.